Michelle Obama Speaks Out About the Racism She Faced As First Lady

"We are living with small, tiny cuts."
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Michelle Obama has long been outspoken about women's rights, racial inequality, and other important social issues. But at the Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s (WFCO) 30th anniversary event in Denver on Tuesday, she talked about hate and discrimination in a much more personal way, admitting that the backlash she faced as a black woman in politics got to her at times.

"The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut," she told WFCO President and CEO Lauren Casteel when asked about the hardest part of shattering the glass ceiling. "Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color." She alluded to a Facebook post by a West Virginia mayor in honor of Trump's win that called her an "ape in heels." Although her approach has been "when they go low, I go high," she doesn't want to pretend she can just brush off these comments, she said. That would discount the real hurt that racism and sexism inflict.

She also explained that it's important for her to be open about the adversity she's faced so girls know they can overcome it, too. "Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut," she said. "We are living with small, tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up."

This isn't the first time Obama has opened up about the challenges of being the first black First Lady. She also spoke about facing racism during her political career at her Tuskegee University commencement address in 2015, describing a magazine cover that depicted her with an Afro and a gun. While all presidents' spouses end up under scrutiny, she said she felt especially harshly judged. "Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?" she remembered thinking.

"At the end of the day, by staying true to the me I've always known, I've found that this journey has been incredibly freeing," she added in her commencement address. "Because no matter what happened, I had the peace of mind of knowing that all of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting, all of it was just noise. It did not define me."